The Little Red Hen is My Kinda Chick

Little Bitty's aunt recently gave her a book called The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza.

As I recall, the old school version has the hen running after the other farm inhabitants in search of some assistance with harvesting wheat and grinding it into flour to make a loaf of bread. In this updated version (retold by Philemon Sturgis and illustrated with cunning cut-paper collages by Amy Walrod), our chick has moved to the city and has a hankering for a pie with the works. But her urban friends are no more helpful than the ones down on the farm.

“Hello,” she said. “Who’ll run to the store and get me some flour?”
"Not I," said the duck.
"Not I," said the cat.
"Not I," said the dog.

Little Bitty was appalled and deeply offended by the idea that the other animals kept refusing to help the hen. But I told her there were some good lessons in this book.

First, that hen wasn’t stymied when nobody came to her aid. She went out and bought her own pizza pan, then went back to buy the flour, the cheese, the toppings. She made her pizza dough from scratch, topped it with everything she wanted on it (including olives, onions and anchovies) and baked her own damn pizza.

On top of it all, when the savory pie was done, she was kind enough to share it with the deadbeats anyway. And smart enough to put her feet up and read a magazine while they did the dishes. (Yes, they finally got the picture, to Little Bitty’s relief.) And she did it all in some very hip shoes.

All in all, I’d say this Little Red Hen is a very Plan B type of chick.

It was an old story I’d long forgotten, but one I was glad to share with my little girl. I hope she won’t forget those lessons. I hope I won’t either.

Suddenly I See

Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm


I was flipping channels one late night and landed on a live performance by a woman I’d never heard of. I put down the remote, intending to have her sing background music as I worked. But this song captured me. I Googled it and I've been listening to it over and over. (So much that Little Bitty has started singing it. "She's a beautiful girl, she's a beautiful girl...")

A few weeks later, flipping channels again, I landed on opening sequence of The Devil Wears Prada and realized that this was the theme song for the movie. So it’s old news. Still, the lyrics to K.T. Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” are fresh and vital for where I am right now. I think it says something about the way I used to feel about myself, the way I always thought I’d feel at this stage of my life—and the way I want to feel now.

Problem is, I’ve been hearing little things about myself lately—and seeing things in myself —that don’t fit that picture. The me I’d like to be is smooth around the edges. She has sea legs; she doesn’t waver or flail when things are in tumult. She does not suffer from procrastination, panic—or PMS.

The me I am has edges and sharp teeth. I do panic, quietly and frequently. I waver. I think one thing—consistently and firmly—until I say it aloud, with all possible didacticism. Then I change my mind. I have brilliant ideas that die of hunger and thirst. I think of the perfect thing to say—three days too late.

And I know I have to accept that. I have to forgive it. I have to mix it in with the fact that I can juggle a million things, think of the perfect gift, write a letter that will always get the interview, fry the best tofu anybody ever tasted, inspire someone to do their best thing, and make a comeback every single time.

My latest speech to Said Husband was all about “people being people”—being human, being flawed, and being okay with that. I believe that in theory—that it’s okay to be messy and complicated and kinda wrong—but it’s damn hard to accept in practice. Not when you want to feel like a beautiful girl in a silver pool of light.

But if you want a face that’s a map of the world, then I believe you have to accept your own humanity—the mountains and valleys, the desert places and the flooding ones. The places where the sun comes up and the ones where all the bones are buried. You have to see all of that in you. And get to know it. And learn to love it.

I'm learning.

Self-knowledge is a nourishment. Self-acceptance is imperative. Self-worth is a treasure. (How’s that for didactic.)

By the way, the chorus of the song goes like this:

Suddenly I see this is what I want to be.
Suddenly I see why the hell it means so much to me.

Dig In

Periodically, my girl Marva will send me a "brilliant carat" newsletter from business and life coach Simon T. Bailey. More than a month ago, she sent me this one—which I forwarded to firestarter Danielle. For some reason (kismet?), D sent it back to me today. Clearly I was meant to read it again. It was good the first time, but a lot can change in a month. Today I'm "standing in a different river" and this message struck me in a way that it hadn't before.

Bailey writes:

"His eyes on fire, Robin [Rampersad] explained that when a tree is going through its winter season, it is denied the ability to produce food through the process of photosynthesis. Everything changes for this tree because it is accustomed to trapping sunlight in its leaves via chlorophyll, which gives the leaves their green pigment, and transforming that chlorophyll along with other viable ingredients into food. This is normal for the tree, and it doesn’t have to think about it. It’s second nature. Yes, this is third grade science but it is so cool.

"In the winter, though, these normal functions are no longer an option because there isn’t enough sunlight to produce food, nor are there any leaves on the tree to trap the light. The tree, at this time, becomes almost dead on the outside, but internally, it begins to search for answers. As a result, it is forced to find food another way. And here’s the brilliance of God—the tree must push its roots deep into the soil to find enough minerals, salts, and water to sustain itself.

"Because the tree has spent the winter anchoring itself deeper and deeper into the soil and finding sustenance in a time of scarcity, it will be able to grow and thrive in the spring and summer months. Its fruit will be of a wonderful quality because the nutrients that helped produce it have come from deep within the recesses of the earth."

I'm struck, today, by the idea that sometimes it's necessary to rely on new and different means of sustenance. We often literally have a favorite place to go for our food. The farmer's market. A favorite bakery. The local burger joint. We rely on that spot to fill us. But what happens when the farmer's market closes for the winter? Or you realize that, for all kinds of reasons, you should probably leave the $8 slices of white-chocolate cheesecake alone for a while? What feeds you then? You have to find another place to forage.

It's true of all kinds of nourishment—physical, spiritual, emotional. Sometimes the thing you've always relied upon to "feed" you—the job, the lover, the church, the ego—can't fill you any longer. Maybe you've entered a dry season. Maybe your field is fallow. But one thing is certain: A sista needs to eat. Another thing that's sure: Spirit will make sure she does.

When you start to fear the haunting "lack" and begin to listen for the hungry moan rising from your belly, reflect on Bailey's story of the trees. Remember the parable of the manna. Believe, if you will, that Spirit always provides. (Kismet.) Believe, if you can, that what comes next may be even more delicious and nourishing than what you've had.

Maybe Marie Antoinette had it right. When your bread is gone, start looking around for the cake.

I Got Shoes

I got shoes.
You got shoes.
All God’s children got shoes….
--from an old gospel song

I was talking to Salaama today about a loved one who, we think, is missing a great opportunity. Why is he hesitating over a prospect that seems so ideal, we wondered? Was it fear? Ego? Wisdom? We don’t know—we can’t know—what keeps him from making a move. All we know is that he is a grown man, making his own choices. He must have his reasons, we reminded ourselves.

“I guess I could afford to put myself in his shoes,” Salaama said, wisely. We agreed that doing so was a sure way to conjure up compassion and push judgment aside. And thinking about things from other people’s point of view almost certainly adds value to your relationship with them.

But I told her that I realized that I sometimes spent so much time worrying about what's happening in other folks’ shoes, that I don’t pay enough attention to what’s happening in my own.

If you’re a wife, a mother or a caretaker of any kind, you probably know the feeling. You’re constantly considering the needs of the people you love. Not just what they need in the moment, but what they’re going to need, what they might need.

Take next week: Said Husband would normally be on parenting duty on Monday, a day I commute to work. But he’s doing an overnight shift the night before. And though he’ll be home in time to take care of Little Bitty, I think he’ll be tired, so I’m planning for her to be somewhere on Monday so he can rest. (And so she won't be home all day with a Daddy who's too tired to play.)

I guess all that comes with the territory to some degree or another. We’re a family after all—so one person’s choices affect the others. But what happens when it goes beyond the family schedule?

It wasn't that long ago that it hit me that I was thinking about everybody else’s career choices and health needs and financial concerns—but paying very little to my own. What was my plan for the future? Where was my next check coming from? How was I fulfilling my reason for being? Is urging someone else to move and grow really the source of my own movement and growth? I don’t want to look up one day and realize that I’ve spent all my energy worrying about other folks’ choices—choices I can’t control anyway—and have done nothing to further my own purpose for being on the planet.

My mother’s father, a poor man with ten children to clothe and feed, insisted on “good shoes”—sturdy soles and high-quality leather—for them all. And he insisted that those hard-earned shoes be well taken care of. I remember my own Daddy sitting down on Saturday nights to wax and polish his shoes for Sunday morning and the rest of the week. These are the people who taught me that taking care of your soles is a good investment. It think they would say that taking care of your own soul is, too.

Exploring Fault Lines

Finally!!

Last fall, I was ranting about couple-heal-thyself books—all of which seemed to be some variation on “your guy is great and your relationship would be too if you could just manage to stay silent and get into man-adoration mode.” Where's the book called Wow, Your Wife is Great, I wondered.

That one still hasn't been published, as far as I can tell, but Yin seems to have found the next best thing: It's (Mostly) His Fault: For Women Who Are Fed Up and The Men Who Love Them.

Author Robert Mark Alter definitely gets points for the title. (Forgive me for wanting to spread the relationship responsibility around a little.) I wonder how balanced his approach really is? A book like this could be a man basher or it could be a throw back to old "husbands should be in charge" thinking. And the reality always is that when you're fed up, you have some responsibility in that, too.

Have you read it? Let me know whether it’s worth checking out.

A Warrior

For my sisters in the midst of making change:

"A warrior is a hunter. She calculates everything. That's control. Once her calculations are over, she acts. She lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push her. No one can make her do things against herself or against her better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and she survives in the best of all possible fashions."

--adapted (by Yin) from Carlos Castaneda

Opposites Attract

That ain’t the problem. The magnetic pull of someone who seems so different from you is practically irresistible. And rather thrilling. Not only do you get to see yourself through different eyes (a view that’s especially appealing if you’re not particularly in love with your own picture of yourself) you get to decorate your homogeneous life with the exotic colors of your Significant Other’s otherness. You also get to congratulate yourself on your open mindedness and your tolerance. See how progressive and enlightened I am to make such a maverick alignment?

No, the attraction is not the problem. It’s getting the attraction to hold when all the variations of “opposite” begin to show themselves. And they will. It may take only a few weeks or months for the novelty to erode or for some circumstance to illuminate the fact that your lanes are diverging. (Say, you’re applying for a job at a Big 6 accounting firm, while he’s saving his tips for a six-month retreat to a Himalayan ashram.) But when the significance of the opposition is more subtle, you may find yourself half a decade into the thing, with adjoining paperwork—a marriage certificate, joint credit cards, a mortgage in both your names—or offspring with your eyes and an Attractive Opposite mouth.

At that point, you’ve got to ask yourself some hard questions, all of which can be summed up thus: Oh shit, what now?

You can take the “This is the Bed I Made, Now I Have to Lie in It” approach, but it rather reeks of self-blame—of wallowing in martyred suffering. A healthier tack might be to adopt the stoic maxim created by the Brit Ministry of Information during World War II: Keep Calm and Carry On. (The Negro Spiritual version of this is “I b’lieve I’ll run on and see what the end gon’ be.”) Either approach tamps down any tendency toward whining–which won’t much help in any case.

If you find yourself asking the question, What did I ever see in this person? don’t ask rhetorically. Aim to reclaim the true answer—and your appreciation for what it was that attracted you. If you find the answer, encase it in glass or bronze it or frame it to keep it for posterity.

But say your back isn’t up to lying in hard beds, and you can’t find any museum-quality traits in your Other. There is also the “Mission Accomplished” perspective with its presumed exit clause. Some people believe that they were brought together for a specific season or reason. When the purpose is past, they can peacefully move on.

I'm sure there are all kinds of beautiful stories of opposites living perfectly peaceful yin-yang lives (please share yours). From what I’ve been hearing lately, though, making a success of an opposites attraction takes some conscious, devoted doing.

I’m not advocating for homogeneity here. There’s a difference, I’d say, between opposites and people who balance each other out. When he knows how to light a fire under her and she knows how to settle him down—and each is willing to bend to the other’s influence—it can make for a beautiful whole.

In order for any of it to work, each must value the gifts of the other. It’s not about opposites attracting. It’s about appreciating your opposite.

All of Us Are Brave

Inherent in any Plan B is the necessity to consider the option of making a move. If the place where you are or the situation you’re in isn’t working out, you’ve either got to find a way to fix it or find a way out.

But which is braver—to stay or to go?

I remember listening to a friend talk about his maverick ancestors who left their land and headed for Oklahoma—homesteaders escaping the misfortune of being Black in the south. He made his clan sound so wild and free—people nourished on wild meat washed down by hard liquor. People who stood up, stared you down. People who smiled a little and dared ya.

My own ancestors didn’t ride off or steal away. They can be traced for generations to plots of land a little north of the North Carolina border or a little south, but not much more than 75 miles in either direction. They are the ones who stayed, tethered by traditions—some that kept them poor, some that kept them hidden, some that them securely rooted. They smiled a little, cast their eyes aside and moved around whatever was in their way.

My grandfather’s legend comes to mind. An orderly in the local hospital, he worked quietly, steadily for the salary that helped feed his ten children. One day he had a heart attack at work. He must have been surrounded by doctors who might have treated him. But he was colored and this was a white hospital in Virginia. So they let him lie until they could send for my grandmother (there was no phone to call) so she could arrange to come get him (there was no car) and take him to the small colored hospital across town.

He survived. And when he’d recovered his strength, he went back to work. At the hospital that had refused him treatment.

Who, then, is stronger? The ones who leave their troubles behind, bracing for an uncertain fate? Or the ones who face their troubles down—certain of them, but certain, too, that somehow they can plow on?

The Exodusters and the Great Migrators must have been courageous souls to pick up and leave for definite or indefinite destinations—someplace, somehow new. I admire them for packing their things and taking to the road, singing I'll Fly Away. But the ones who stayed must have possessed a sturdy nerve to stay and stand firm in their roots. They sang, too: I Will Not Be Moved.

I understand both urges. My tendency, when times get too tough, is to look for a new road to take. But I am transfused with the sticky blood of people who kept plowing the land they knew. A free child of people who were not, I understand that there is more than one way to make tracks.

So, who is braver? I have considered it for years now, and I don’t know. There is a noted womanist studies book titled All the Woman Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. I would like to think that all of us are brave. And that maybe it doesn’t matter that you made the courageous choice, as long as you know you’ve made the right one: the one that keeps your soul alive.

WWOD?

I first heard Michelle Obama speak last spring during the Presidential primaries. I’d scooped Little Bitty out of school early, gone down to the city armory, and stood in a line that extended down the block, waiting. Her flight from Chicago was so much delayed that at the time she was supposed to be delivering her speech here, her plane was still on the tarmac in Illinois. But we all waited. And it was worth the wait.

What struck me most about that speech—and what has struck me consistently during these past two years (two years!) of hearing both Obamas speak—was the sense of purpose that they have individually, that they seem to share with each other and that they are offering to the nation.

She talked that day, as I’ve heard her do since, about her past—the lessons she learned from watching her father; listening to her mother; navigating school, university and the world of work. She talked about her vision for her future—the kind of people she wants her girls to become, the things she wants to do herself, the things she expects from her husband.

In the open letter to his daughters, Barack Obama outlines the same vision—one that is personal for his family, but that also places them in a larger context, so that they understand that they have an important place and an important purpose in the world. He wrote, “I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you've had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much—although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.”

If nothing else, the Obamas are deeply thoughtful. Their sense of purpose is inspirational. Whatever happens in the days to come—whatever the difficulties and triumphs—I anticipate being inspired by this family. Not in an abstract, political, nationalistic way; for me, their leadership is personal. They are a model for my family—or what I hope my family to be: A strong, sensible woman and a thoughtful, purposeful man together raising balanced, self-assured children and living out a life of intention.

Pomegranates and Paradoxes

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. . . .”

—from Antony and Cleopatra

When we were courting, easing into engagement, my now-husband called me “99,” after the svelte, dark-haired Agent 99 on the 60s TV show “Get Smart.” (Remember that one?) He said that I represented 99 percent of the things he had always wanted in a woman. (Ever practical, he didn’t call me "100" to leave a little room for whatever tiny little thing about me didn’t quite make his list. No one’s perfect, he affirmed. Of course I agreed.)

Back then, I thought the nomenclature clever and fun and romantic and I loved to sign little notes to him with my new, numeric nickname. But after a while (I don’t remember when, but I’d guess it was sometime after the dreamy beach wedding and well into the getting-to- know-the-REAL-you phase) it occurred to me that 99 was a little…limiting.

“I’m not 99,” I told him. “I’m 99 times 99. I’m infinite.” So was he, I conceded. So are we all.

I rebel against the slightest sense that I might be expected to stay within the confines of someone’s expectations (even my own). I knew enough about myself to understand that I am, if nothing else, a mass of contradictions, a packet of perfect paradox. There is no box that some part of me won’t seep out of. I've done things that surprised even me and learned from the experience that, with me, anything is possible. I am a woman of “infinite variety.” So are you. We all are.

It’s terribly inconvenient. So much easier—for you and everyone around you—to settle on a definition of yourself and just stick to that. Frees your mind to think about other things. But we grow and change. We're sure of one thing today and certain of something else tomorrow. We break and hit bottom; we recover, we realize, we rise up. Shift happens.

The definition of “human” includes innate complexity. And if we are to know and embrace our own personhood—and that of the people we love—then we might as well be prepared to delve into the convoluted intricacy that makes us different from one another. If we value our own personhood—and want it to be accepted—we will demand that delve. If we crave the sweet, complicated intimacy that comes from fully and truly knowing another, we’ll be willing dig in. It’s a juicy journey, but well worth it.

Think of it like eating a pomegranate. Outside: alluringly rosy, surprisingly tough; inside: full of crunch and pith and juice. You have to deal with the seeds and the stain in order to sip the bittersweet nectar. An apple is an easier, sweeter fruit to eat, but the pomegranate has 99 times the goods.

***********************

My infinite sister Danielle LaPorte’s recent post inspired this one. Check out her new site whitehottruth.com for more self-inspiration.

Choose to Do You

I’ve been experimenting. For the past week, before I make any decision—even the smallest—I ask myself: What do I want to do?

Sounds like a ridiculously obvious way to make a decision. But try it. In this culture of shoulds and musts, it can be shockingly difficult. Shocking because this is also a culture that encourages you to “do you”—so you think you’re doing what you want to do. At least I did.

I'm not one of those women who selflessly devotes all her time to her children or who is married to her job. I love my crew and I like my work, but I make sure I zip out for yoga class at least twice a week. I make time for coffee with my girls. I’ll buy myself something pretty when I get a notion. I make time for my own pursuits.

But for many of us, doing what you want to do means fitting your stuff around someone’s staff meeting, someone’s piano lessons, someone’s doctor’s appointment, someone’s nap schedule. And that someone isn’t you.

This week I realized it was impossible for me to make a decision without first thinking about what was on Said Husband’s schedule or Little Bitty’s wish list or someone else's agenda. I’d said yes to baby-sitting, an out-of-town shopping trip, a graduation ceremony, and a pot-luck before I could stop and think of myself.

The more you start working your stuff around someone else’s stuff, the further back you fall in line and the more likely your own stuff is to be bumped or back burnered. If you’re not careful, you start to forget what it is that you really want or like to do. You start to think that your happiness lies in how well Junior performed at the piano recital or how much lower hubby’s cholesterol is since you’ve been cooking more.

And you are happy about all that. You love these people. You are glad to support them.
The problem is not saying yes to other people. The problem is when it means you’re saying no to you.

What about me? That is the question that’s going to stop you from drifting into a totally co-dependent state where you cease to exist outside of the people around you—an invisible state that evolves from ignoring your own gifts, talents, passions and desires until they finally atrophy, shrink and wither.

My friend Renai, who does a fabulous job of executing her own creative energy—despite running around after an ailing mother, an ailing man and two busy kids—admits that “doing you” is a hard job to manage.

“I was thinking the other day that I know why women/moms just opt to put our needs on the back burner or nix them altogether,” she says. “It's damn hard. I always feel like I'm trying to squeeze in a little bit for me and not a day goes by when I just don't want to throw my hands up and say, “Forget it.” But I eek out 5 minutes here and an hour there; maybe that's the way it has to be for now.

The point is that she’s...eeking. Which means she’s asking herself the magic question. And she’s answering it. And she’s doing the hardest part of the experiment: choosing to do what she knows her own heart desires.

There will be folks who find this amazingly selfish and practically impossible. In the real world, no one can just do whatever she wants to do, we think. But that’s guilt-rooted thinking. Instead, think of it this way: what you want to do is what your spirit calls for. And if you’re moving in Spirit, everything else will move in Divine Order. That makes way for the possibility that you can do what you want to do WITHOUT HURTING ANYONE ELSE. You can do what you want to do AND everyone around you will be fine.

It’s true. At least it has been for me, for this week.

Falling and Failing in Love

We’ve fallen out of love. It happens to everyone, apparently. I’ve read at least one expert opinion that is doesn’t take but 18 months of constant contact to change the chemistry from blazing to blasé. They also say it’s not the end of the world—nor necessarily the end of the relationship. Couples can forge strong, lasting relationships based on a new kind of love—one that simmers comfortably, even if it never returns to a boil.

(According to Reva Seth, author of First Comes Marriage: Modern Relationship Advice from the Wisdom of Arranged Marriages, many people in arranged marriages seem to have the opposite experience. They enter a relationship with no expectation of feeling “in love” but grow closer and more loving over time. Lucky them.)

All that sounds reassuring. But when you watch your partner’s mouth move to form the words "I'm not in love with you," it’s like being dropped into an elevator shaft—without the benefit of an elevator. And it’s just as sickening a sensation when you have to admit that the feeling is largely mutual.

That said, my world actually did not end when I got this news. Said Husband is very adamant that “in love” and “love” are two different things and that he retains the latter feeling for me. (That, too, is mutual.) And we’re both optimistic—and have been assured by many folks who’ve been married longer than we have—that this is just the proverbial “bad patch."

In a way, I’m glad all this is out in the open. Call me odd, but for me hearing the worst is better than imagining the worst. For months, we’ve had a hard time talking, touching, even looking at each other. I just couldn’t figure out why—so my mind ran wild with unresolved speculation. But somehow for me, once I know what I’m actually dealing with—the cold, honest truth of it—I feel like there ought to be something I can DO about it. I feel like I have some power in the situation.

So I did what I tend to do when my life feels like it’s running away with me: I sat down and starting writing, trying to map out a resolution. I decided that perhaps we can push past this phase if we stop wallowing in the painful, disappointing feeling of it and start thinking about what is really going on. To that end, I’ve made myself a list of questions for each of us to ponder.

1. What are the things that I’m not in love with? (Buy a fresh ream of paper and make a list.)

2. Are these things annoyances or things I truly disrespect? (Get over the annoyances. Deal with the deep stuff.)

3. Can any of the “disrespect” stuff be discussed and resolved? Am I willing to understand these things differently (i.e. from the other person's perspective) and accept them, too?

4. What are the things that I do love and respect about my once-beloved? (Make another list and really do your best to fill up another ream of paper.)

5. If I weigh these things with an open heart, are they substantial enough to outweigh the other?

6. Can I be patient enough and stay open enough to make sure the answers I give to these questions are really, deeply true?

I figure that if I really stay deep and contemplate these questions, only one thing can happen: We’ll discover that there are things about one another that just cannot be overcome. And those things will be the ones that tell us, with certainty, that were not meant to make a life together. Or they will be the ones that remind us that nothing can tear us apart.

My objective side says that, either way, we’ll benefit from having a clearer idea of how to move forward. The optimistic side of me hopes that the process will reveal something beautiful and valuable—a new way of thinking that will open our hearts wide to love again.

The Easy Button

My good friend Renai and I were commiserating the other day about the trials of 21st-century school selection. Gone, for us modern mamas, are the days when you packed a peanut- butter sandwich in a Holly Hobby lunch box and sent your child off to the school down the street. Now we have School Choice. Which means we have to choose: Public school, private school, neighborhood school, magnet school, charter school, home school, even un-school.

Can we afford private school? (No.) Can we get financial aid? (The answer for me, after turning over more paperwork for preschool than I did for grad school: No.) So, charter school? Magnet school? For magnets, you're supposed to attend the Choice Fair to learn about your options. Then you have to go to open houses at each of the schools you might be interested in. I thought open house meant a chat with the principal and a peek into some classrooms. Um, no.

Tuesday I spent an hour and a half at a school taking in a Power Point presentation. Listening to gifted kids describe their day. Participating in a Q&A with a panel of teachers. Hearing from the “enrichments” specialists (who were called art and music teachers in my day). Listening to the school band—the elementary school band—play three selections. (Three.) Walking down halls where outside each classroom door is the teacher’s name and the name of the college(s) from which she or he graduated. (As if the teacher’s alumni status would matter to my child who will be five when she enrolls.)

That’s if she enrolls. Because, this being a “choice” school, we have to fill out an application, participate in a lottery and wait to see if we’re selected. So, after having participated in the exhausting process of exploring all my options and making the very best possible choice for my child—I have, in fact, no choice in whether she attends the school or not. (Of course, if she doesn’t “win” the lottery, she can go to her neighborhood school. In which case we’ll have to choose whether she should go to the year-round school or the traditional school….)

What I want to know is this: Where is the easy button?

Why has everything gotten so complicated? I don’t mean just the school stuff. Right now I’ve got to make choices about my career, about what kind of car to buy, about which contractor should build the French drain in my yard, even about marriage. (We think of marriage as being a choice you make once, but I’m learning that even that is a choice I have to keep making over and over again.) And each decision seems to require research, reading, evaluation, pricing things out, mulling things over and double-checking your facts.

Some things—like where your kid should go to school—warrants a bit of research and rumination. But so many other things just aren’t worth the effort. How much time did I spend in the baking goods aisle the other day trying to decide whether to buy natural sugar, organic sugar, free-trade sugar, dried sugar cane or to go to the nearest Harris Teeter for a bag plain old Dixie Crystals?

Sometimes the choices are difficult because we don’t make the one choice that could make things easier: The choice to simplify. Choosing to join the one committee that you feel passionate about instead of spreading yourself over too many obligations. Letting the kid play in the yard instead of signing her up for nine different extra-curriculars. Skipping the obligatory luncheon. Letting Saturday actually be a day off.

What would be wrong with choosing the thing that is simpler but just-as-good? The evening I bought a rotisserie chicken and served a bagged salad for dinner with my friend, I had just as nice a time as I did at last year’s multi-course brunch for 30 on New Year’s morning. (In fact, the impromptu chicken dinner was probably nicer because my back wasn’t aching from standing up washing collard greens until after midnight the day before.)

If you’re not careful, doing the easy thing can seem like cheating. We think we're supposed to do the thing that takes the most effort, the most time and the most life blood in order to prove that we’re doing our all and giving our best. Hey, I don’t have anything against doing the best you can. But sometimes—probably most times—what we do best is what we do with the most ease. Sometimes we need to give ourselves a break, see the rat race for what it is and take the easy way out.

Just say know.

You want him to know. Know what? Whatever. Just know. Know that sexy lingerie seems like an intimate gift, if he really knew you intimately he’d know you’d rather have the newest book by your favorite author. That you’d die for your children, but you’d give anything if he’d take them completely away for a long weekend. That though it looks easy to keep all the balls in the air, it’s nearly killing you. That you’re worried. All the time. About everything. And that it would mean so much to you that, even if he doesn’t know, he wants to know.

When you call your best friend and utter half a sentence, she can finish the rest of it. Because she knows. But she’s not your partner. It’s not her life you’re sharing. It’s his. And you want him to get it.

But he doesn’t.

Some experts say he can’t. Sounds sexist, but some research says he’s not programmed to think the way you do. It's a fact of genetics that what seems logical to you just doesn’t make sense to him. (No, he’s not nuts. He’s just wired differently.)

That’s not to say that he can’t learn. With some practice, he can start at least to hear. But that’s his work to do, if he chooses it.

Your job is to stop thinking he’s just going to know. In fact, to quit worrying about whether he’s going to know or not. Your job is to make sure you know.

I’ve found that since I’ve been partnered—and especially since I had a child—it’s harder to think about myself as an individual. Somehow, when I start to think about what I need, what I want or what I want to do, the needs and wants of the rest of my crew creep into my reflections and decisions. It’s as if, when I married and had a baby, my own desires got taken from me and poured into a mixing bowl with my family’s. And for the life of me, I can’t unmix myself.

Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. But I just don’t want to completely lose myself in the mix. I don’t want to forget what I want. I don’t want to forget what I know about myself.

I believe you need to know your true needs—from the inside out—and to speak them first to yourself. To look in the mirror and say:
I need four days alone.
I need cotton pajamas and the new Toni Morrison novel.
I need to find a way to rest my worries.
I need to stop needing to juggle.
I need to let some of this Super Woman stuff go.

You need to know. To admit what you know. Then give yourself that. Without guilt. Without apology. Without self judgment. Accepting that it’s okay to need what you need. Understanding that giving yourself what you need is okay, too.

Insist Upon Your Life

“You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die or insist upon your life.” —Odetta

Odetta, the legendary folk singer, died on Tuesday at the age of 77. Her interview for the New York Times' "The Last Word" is a video worth watching. She is a beautiful, strong, wise and elegant woman in the way the Earth herself is beautiful, strong, wise and elegant.

Sounds Like a Plan

I like to think of myself as a planner, since I operate best when I can have things laid out before me. But, in truth, I don’t plan so much as I actively look for and affirm interesting opportunities to present themselves. The plans come after the fact—based on what I can envision around the next curve in the road.

This paradoxical combination of creative calculation and reliance on faith—not blind faith, but faith that peeks through its fingers at the possibilities that lie ahead—has worked well for me.

Until recently.

For the past few weeks, the future I’ve seen and the plans I’ve laid have ended up in a multi-car pile-up. A job that seemed meant for me dissolved before I could claim it. The book proposal that generated so much excitement is still waiting for a publisher to claim it. When a potentially career-changing writing gig fell through, it wasn’t a simple matter of that magazine’s editor not liking my story idea. The whole magazine folded. How’s that for having a door slam on your foot?

And that’s just the work-related stuff. All around me—in my home, in my relationship, with my child—things are breaking down, springing leaks, sputtering, fizzling and wobbling unsteadily. My life is, as we say in the vernacular, a hot mess.

I don’t know whether to blame the ineffectiveness of my planning or the astigmatism of my faith. I tell myself that if I had planned more effectively, maybe my life would be on more solid footing. Or if my faith were less blurred, maybe the need for solid footing would be moot: I’d be flying on wings.

But maybe not.

Maybe blame, with its negative implications and guilt association, is unnecessary, because maybe what I am experiencing is just the dip and dive of life. Maybe this is me falling free of a plane I’ve been pushed out of, dropping from the sky toward the open arms of earth and feeling the fierce pull of gravity in the long moments before my parachute opens. (At least I still have enough faith to believe the parachute will open.)

Today in the mail, I got a little postcard that says: “We affirm that divine order is at work and that Spirit is guiding us each step along the way.”

Maybe all this is just part of the plan.

Order in the court

The 60s and 70s were times of upheaval and turmoil by most readings of American history. But my life back then was comfortingly orderly. We grew up with simple routines that were, looking back on them, almost comforting. Every school-day morning the clock radio flipped to 7 a.m. and woke us to the sounds of WBTM’s playlist that seemed to consist solely of Paul Simon tunes. My sister and I knew to slip on the clothes that had been laid out the night before. We could hear Daddy in the kitchen boiling water for our cereal. Mama combed our hair while we spooned our oatmeal. Even the last minute rush out the door was part of the normalcy of our mornings.

Then it was laundry on Friday, housework on Saturday morning and church on Sunday. And still there was time on Sunday afternoons to take a drive to visit family friends. By sundown on Sunday we’d still be playing tag and catching lightning bugs while our parents lingered over their goodbyes. No one was frantically trying to get ready for the next frantic week. It was peaceful because times were different. But also because my parents lived and raised us according to their sense of order.

What happened? Those routines worked for all of us—or seemed to. (My mother was often late for things but never frazzled and frantic as I so often am.) So why am I not following that lead?

In so many ways, I’m freer than my parents were. There are fewer rules, more choices and more "conveniences," so my life is much more “anything goes” than theirs. And while that would seem to make things so much easier, it also seems to open the door to chaos. Having a whole cornucopia of choices means… well, that we have to wade through all of them and decide what to do. Frankly, it’s all too much.

I’m not nostalgic for the 70s. (The eyeglass frames alone are enough to make me never wish to turn back time.) But I need more order in my life.

People who know me will think I’m heading into OCD territory; I have a rep for being pretty organized. But “order” the way I’m thinking about it feels a little different from “organization.” The latter has a whiff of everything-in-its-place rigidity. Order feels more fluid, more instinctive. Order isn’t uptight, but it is focused. It’s about being on purpose.

My first step toward a more orderly life: A more orderly mind. My brain is so frantic with thoughts that it’s hard to get a thought-out thought…out. You’ve got to make sense to yourself, self-help guru Iyanla Vanzant likes to say. I’m so busy doing and going and rushing and responding to the needs of other people that my hours are often consumed by tasks that seem necessary at the time, but that don’t always yield much at the end of the day. Even getting my life in order has become a task that I’m rushing through and tripping over.

I’ve got to stop. Stop trying to keep up with the self- and society-imposed demands to respond— instantly and cleverly—to every request that hits my desk or my ear. I need to be still long enough to see what’s really needed. (First, I need to check for what I need. But that’s a post for another day.) I need to stop to get a sense of what really makes sense and a sense of how best to move toward that. If I give myself space to breathe and think—and ease myself away from the tendency toward swift, blind reaction—I have the feeling that a sense of order will follow. May it be Divine Order.

Making Plans

I’ve asked and asked and asked: What is our mission? What are our plans? What are we going to do together? What does our Big Picture look like?

And I haven’t, for the life of me, been able to get a clear answer from my husband.

I don’t know if he can’t answer. If he won’t answer. Do the questions offend him? Are they too esoteric? Do they just seem silly? Is he just the type of person who wants to flow wherever life takes him? Is he a “let go and let God” guy who believes that you don’t have to plan at all? Does he think planning is futile? Unnecessary? Ineffective? I don’t quite know what be believes. And has been driving me crazy.

Eventually I started thinking, “Ef it! If he won’t talk about a plan for our life, then I’ll just start making plans of my own.” I began to throw myself into creating long-range plans and short-term schedules. I started fleshing out ideas that I’ve had, putting some meat on those dreams. Getting organized. Getting disciplined. Getting ready to roll.

It has bothered me to set goals that don’t include him, but I've felt t like I have no choice. The call to get moving is very strong, but I’m the kind of person who can’t press the gas without some directions, a map, a destination in mind. I need a plan for my life. I'm going to have a plan for my life. Period.

And then the revelation came.

Maybe that was the point: For me to do it for myself. It's my life, after all. I know myself well enough to know that if he had responded to my queries about his dreams and goals, I would have thrown myself wholeheartedly into his vision for our future. Because the reality is that I didn’t have a clear vision of my own aspirations. I had reached my previously set career goals (The NY magazine job). I had spent the past few years catching up on my personal goals (Marriage? Check. Child? Check. House? Check.). Now what? I had no idea.

That’s why I was pushing so hard for us to talk about it. I was hoping that he would help get me motivated or that we would motivate one another. In the end, not having a response from him ignited a fine-then-I’ll-show-YOU attitude that fired me up to get off my ass and start to think about the life I want.

To be honest, I’m still not absolutely clear on where I want my life to go. (Hmm, could that be why Said Husband has been so closed-lipped? He doesn’t quite know the answer to the questions I’ve been asking?) But I know some things I want in place. I know how I want my life to feel. I know I can find the ways and means. How, exactly, will it come together? I don’t quite know. But I’m working on a plan.

Keep Something To Yourself

Okay, okay, I admit it: My name is not Zenia. (That’s a derivative of my grandmother’s name--a woman who needed a Plan B if ever there was one.) Everything else on the blog is true, though all the names have been created to protect the inno… the people I’m writing about.

When I started this blog, I needed to be anonymous because, frankly, I was pretty disgruntled with the state of my situation. I needed to vent. I needed to work some things out. I knew I needed to “go There” but I didn’t know where “There” might be and I didn’t want to risk shocking or offending or embarrassing anyone along the way. But I didn’t want to censor myself, either. Where better than the blogosphere to be totally you…and be totally invisible?

It didn’t take long before I started to think about coming out. Invisibility is apparently not a cure for the identity loss I mention in my profile. (That's true, too.) So I did what I always do when I have to make a decision. I carefully weighed the pros and cons. Then I asked all my friends for advice.

Now, my circle includes a wide-ranging collection of minds, so I was not surprised that each gave a different reason for her answer. But ultimately each answer was the same: To a woman, they all said, “Keep it to yourself.”

Was it not yet ready for prime time? No, they said they appreciated the premise. They praised the writing. But they knew it was mine—and they encouraged me to have something of my own.

Indeed, these passages are about having a room of one’s own—if only a virtual one. This blog (and perhaps every blog) is about having your own place—a place where you can just be yourself and speak your piece, without repercussions or self-incrimination or self-censoring. Without mincing your words or retracting your thoughts.

Ultimately, if it is to have any value beyond me, Plan B stops being just about me venting and plotting my escape from an unsatisfactory life. It’s about women (and men) taking control of their lives again.

A couple of months ago, when I wrote about “having your own” I had money on my mind. But I realize now that having your own is about more than what’s in your Birkin. It’s about owning something that no one has given you and that no one can take. It’s about having something that you hold in your heart that you value and love. It’s that thing you possess in full, with no co-signer. The stock market can’t crush it; the bank can’t foreclose on it; it can’t be outsourced, downsized, diminished, discounted or divorced.

This is the question that began Plan B: What do you have that is truly your own?
This is the question that each post asks and encourages us all to answer: What do you own that no one can take from you?

What I have is my name. And it isn’t Zenia. It’s Tamara.

What would happen if...

...when someone asked you to do something and you weren't really, totally, quite exactly sure whether you wanted to do it or not, instead of saying, "Okay, yes," you said, "Um, no."